Member of the reform faction of the early Republican Party .
In 1884 the Mugwumps refused to support the Republican presidential candidate, James Blaine , whom they considered politically corrupt, and campaigned instead for Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland , whom they saw as a reformer. The term, derived from an Indian word for "war leader," had been used in political slang to mean "kingpin" and was applied to the breakaway group by a New York newspaper. In U.S. political slang mugwump came to mean any independent voter; the term was later adopted in England.